Condensed movement

Next Move dance festival offers full slate of performance, talks at Proctors

By Tresca Weinstein

Published 2:44 pm, Wednesday, April 2, 2014

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Next Move at Proctors

Next Move at Proctors

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Sinopoli's Next Move at Proctors

Sinopoli's Next Move at Proctors

Photo: (c)Gary Gold 2013

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For the fourth annual Next Move Festival of Modern Dance, curator Ellen Sinopoli has condensed what used to be two evenings of dance into one jam-packed event. The program, set for 5:30 p.m. Saturday at Proctors, features three dance companies, artist talks introducing the works and refreshments between performances.

"We're changing the format, but keeping the premise of giving audiences a broader spectrum of what modern dance can be about," Sinopoli said. "The program will be very diverse."

This year, Sinopoli has invited choreographer Lior Shneior and New York City-based troupe Project 44, who will both premiere new works at Next Move. Sinopoli's own company will perform "Speaking Duchamp," which she choreographed last fall as a site-specific work for the Sage Colleges' Opalka Gallery.

The piece pays homage to artist Marcel Duchamp and his Cubist-inspired painting "Nude Descending a Staircase." At the Opalka, the dancers moved on and manipulated a lightweight rolling staircase, and interacted with Michael Oatman's "D'entre les Morts," a video work inspired by Duchamp's painting.

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"We've restaged the work for Proctors, but we'll still have the stairs, the video element and the music by Joan Tower ("Silver Ladders"), which I love," Sinopoli said.

A short story by American author Damon Runyon titled "Little Pinks" inspired the new work by Shneior, an Israeli native living and working in Berlin. Shneior uses a series of duets to translate into movement the tragic tale of a busboy's unrequited love for a club dancer, whose death he later avenges. The piece will be danced Saturday by Christy Williams of Saratoga Springs (a former Sinopoli intern) and Andrew Champlin.

Shneior "has a very European theatricality," Sinopoli said; he studied in Germany with founding members of Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal. In the states, Shneior trained with Bill T. Jones and danced for Anna Sokolow, and is a member of the New Artists Dance in New England (NADINE) Project for young choreographers, based in Ledyard, Conn.

Project 44 will present "fraternity," an all-male quintet broken into six sections that include solos, trios and ensemble work, and set to music ranging from Claude Debussy to the funk/hip-hop band NERD. Artistic director Gierre Godley — who trained at the Ailey School and has worked with numerous choreographers, including Camille A. Brown, Gus Solomons, Jr. and Next Move alum Kyle Abraham — says the movement was built from the company members' personal experiences, loosely translated into dance.

"I wanted to focus on social dynamics within a male community," he said. "We like to think that men should all get along, based on the simple fact that we are men. However, at times our similarities can blind us to the reality that we are different people, unpredictable people. I wanted to explore those differences."

New this year at Next Move, the artist talks between dances will offer viewers deeper insight into the works and their creators. Shneior, Sinopoli and Patrick J. O'Neill, Project 44's rehearsal director, will introduce their respective dances and field questions from the audience.

"They'll be speaking about what the audience can expect, how they approach movement and a little bit about their backgrounds," Sinopoli said. "I know, from doing Prelude talks at The Egg before my performances, that people are interested in the choreographer's thought process and where pieces come from."